Space switching of data is traditionally unattractive because the resulting switching matrix with m inputs and m outputs grows at a rate of m.sup.2 and becomes physically overwhelming as m increases to a large number of inputs. For example, to provide strictly nonblocking switching of 270 columns for each of 256 STM-1 links using synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) protocol results in 4,777,574,400 switch elements. Such a large number of switch elements makes it economically unfeasible to build such a switch.